Carving a niche for “official superstitions”

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that there’s no well-drawn line to tell the government when it can interfere with parental discretion.Â Cases like that of Daniel Hauser (the 13-year-old boy with a six-inch-diameter tumor whose parents wanted to treat with “natural” remedies instead of chemo) seem fairly clear-cut to me–the courts should interfere.Â Â But are you a bad parent if you don’t give your child EVERY available vaccine?Â What if you don’t take your kid to the dentist every six months?Â When does the government step in?

What makes it complicated is the well-established deference in the American court system toward mainstream religious beliefs (or what I like to call “official superstitions”).Â Sadly, it’s a fact that judges (who would throw the book at negligent parents who espouse unique, exotic or little-known beliefs, and thereby harm their child) hardly blink an eye–or perhaps they’re afraid to be perceived as hostile to religion, which motivates a great many voters–at dangerous nonsense that’s backed by scripture or denominational pedigree.Â Read this recent article from the Associated Press and prepare to be outraged:

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Though most states have child abuse laws allowing religious exemptions for parents who shun medicine for their sick children, recent cases have raised the thorny legal issues for parents following less-recognized faiths.

Historically, many of the parents addressed by the laws have embraced faiths like Pentecostalism and Christian Science, while others are Jehovah’s Witnesses – all established denominations that the law has gradually taken into account.

It’s harder for judges to decide cases involving parents who don’t belong to a well-known denomination, yet also don’t believe in using medicine for their kids. Legal and religious scholars say it’s becoming more difficult for courts to decide when to honor the religious beliefs of parents and when to order conventional medical treatment for extremely sick children.

The manslaughter trial of an Oregon couple who claim they were following their religious beliefs in the 2008 pneumonia death of their 1-year-old daughter was to begin Monday. Carl and Raylene Worthington are members of Followers of Christ Church, which has been investigated for past child deaths.

In Tennessee, Jacqueline Crank and her minister Ariel Sherman face child neglect charges in the death of her 15-year-old daughter Jessica, who died in 2002 with a basketball-sized tumor on her shoulder. Prosecutors say based on Sherman’s advice, the girl’s mother relied on prayer instead of medicine.

Sherman has been accused of being a cult leader whose Universal Life Church is not a legitimate religion. He has denied such charges and says the church is Christian-based and embraces the Bible.

Believers in faith healing point to a Biblical verse in the Epistle of James, which describes how church elders should be called in to pray over the sick. There’s no mention of doctors, and literalists interpret it to mean medical treatment should be eschewed over prayer.

Gregory P. Isaacs, an attorney for Crank, who’s out on bond, argues that Tennessee’s religious exemption law is untested and too vague.

“It really has a tremendous amount of problems,” Isaacs said. “What is an organized religion and what is an ordained minister? What illnesses can you attempt to heal by faith? Those are the two pitfalls in the statute. That’s not what’s really clear.”

Jim Dwyer, a William and Mary Law School professor who’s written articles about and participated in litigation on the topic, said it’s often more complicated for courts to discern cases with unaffiliated religions because judges and juries aren’t as familiar with them and are skeptical of their legitimacy.

“The Supreme Court has adopted a very broad definition of religion,” Dwyer said. “But … you have to show sincere religious beliefs. Some judges might be skeptical of sincerity if it’s something they’ve never heard of, if the person says, ‘I don’t belong to a certain church. I just have some beliefs that I saw on the Internet,’ or ‘In our own home, we’ve developed this set of beliefs.'”

Dr. Ellen Wright Clayton, a pediatrician and co-director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics and Society at Vanderbilt University, says when treatment for an illness is very toxic and the prognosis is dire, courts tend to rule parents don’t have to pursue medical treatment. If that’s not the case, courts are likely to order the treatment.

“Until medicine became effective, there was no push to say we absolutely have to do medical treatment. There wasn’t this notion of deference (to religion) until medicine began to work and to become institutionally powerful.”

Besides the states that have religious exemption laws, five states – Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nebraska and North Carolina – have repealed such laws.

Many of the exemption laws were enacted in the 1970s. Rita Swan, director of the Sioux City, Iowa-based advocacy group Children’s Healthcare is a Legal Duty, which lobbies states to repeal such laws, said that since 1975, there have been at least 274 known cases of U.S. children who have died after medical care was withheld on religious grounds.

She says the majority of such cases are still associated with established denominations like Pentecostalism, though “the Internet has opened up some more possibilities than it did before” and there have been some cases involving unaffiliated denominations.

Authorities in Minnesota convinced a judge to force 13-year-old Daniel Hauser into chemotherapy, prompting his mother Colleen to skip a court hearing and – with her son in tow – go on the run for nearly a week in May.

They headed to Southern California, where they considered a trip into Mexico for alternative cancer treatments, before eventually returning to the Hausers’ home in Sleepy Eye, Minn., about 100 miles southwest of the Twin Cities. The boy has since received chemotherapy treatments, which appear to be working.

The family prefers natural healing practices suggested by an Internet-based group called the Nemenhah Band, which says it follows American Indian beliefs.

In Wisconsin, a jury convicted Leilani Neumann, of Weston, Wis., of second-degree reckless homicide in May for failing to rush her 11-year-old daughter Madeline Kara Neumann to a doctor. She died of untreated diabetes in March 2008.

Prosecutors argued she killed the girl by ignoring obvious symptoms – she couldn’t walk or talk and was believed to be in a coma – until it was too late. The mother testified she didn’t realize her daughter was so ill and did all she could to help, in line with the family’s belief in faith healing.

In the wake of the Wisconsin case, Swan said legislators there are considering a bill that would repeal the state’s religious exemption to its child abuse and neglect law.

“In the U.S. under the First Amendment, we’re not supposed to be establishing religion or carving out any preferences for prestigious religions,” Swan said. “The courts should not be giving any kind of deference to established denominations and making any distinctions.”